[WIT006] Where is This – You Dream About Work (pro-c42, 20 copies – 7 publicly available)

The final WiT record. Not even remotely HNW. Chronologically fits between debut In the Privacy of Your Own Home and the e.p. Where is This. Feels a bit like Coil to me, a bit post rocky. There’s drums on one track. Where is This is now complete.

You Dream about Where is This dreaming about you dreaming about Work. Where is this dream you dream about? Work dream? This dream? This is where you dream about work. This is where you dream about Where is This.

[NON001] Anonymous – Gaines’s Mill (cdr, 10 copies)

1 hour of flawless HNW.

Pricing

You Dream About Work is €5
Gaines’s Mill is €3
Postage will be worked out individually but will be cheap.

The first is a record Anonymous entitled Gaines’s Mill
The second is a pro-cs. It’s the last album by Where is This and it’s called You Dream About Work. Produced predominantly for a private cassette swap, there will be *very* limited copies for sale publicly.

Holy shit. A five star review for my split with Clive Henry. Copies still available from here

Where is This / Clive Henry – Untitled / XV

This two way split CDR offers up six slices of progressive & creative walled noise from these two respected British & Irish projects. The split originally appeared in late 2012, as a private release by Mr Henry, and as with any release put out by Clive the packaging here has a nicely pro & arty look to it- taking in his house style of 5 or so art cards, which feature texts & artwork relating to the release.
Each artists offers up three tracks a piece- with Where Is This tracks falling between the six, and nearing ten minute mark. And Mr Henry’s tracks falling between the nine, and fifteen minute mark.

So first up we have three tracks from Irish project Where Is This- this has been active since 2009 releasing around thirty or so releases. Sound wise this project has covered a fair bit of sonic ground over it’s releases- moving through retro synth sound tracking, Harsh noise, easy listening to industrial rhythms, slight electronica after traces, noise/ drone crossbreeds, and HNW. The tracks on offer here are very much in the progressive/creative walled noise setting.

So the first of WIT track comes in the form of “Ficxsyer Uphurr”, and it’s built around this great, layered & cutting in ‘n’ out slice of wall-making. The track opens up with a mixture of dense mid-range noise texturing that keeps cutting in & out in a most effectively jerky manner, and under this are sudden sways of billow ‘n’ wind whistling tonality. At around the two minute mark WIT adds in another layer of the really abrasive & chalk textured noise, and this element really makes you almost jump out of your seat when it first kicks in, and as the track progresses one gets a feel akin to having your ears & head been dragged along a slow ‘n’ flesh ripping sander. All told it’s a most effective & intense bit of cleverly layered walled noise, which just seems to get more manic & head grating the further it goes on.

The next WIT track is entitled “Mirror Neuron”, and this track has an almost muffled, warped, and very corrupted groove running through it’s walled-ness. The ‘wall’ is built around a mixture of rapid yet very dense weave of juddering, jittering & searing noise textures- these are fed into spiralling ‘n’ twisting mass of sound which seems bay & grate away at ones sonic sensors. Again this is another very satisfying & very intense bit of creative walled noise.

And lastly from WIT we have the track “That’s It Then, Yeah?”. This track is built around rapid sheets of intense & searing drone textures, which are underfed by a selection of buffering storm elements, weird unrecognisable murmured ‘n’ buried voice elements, and sways of constricted then pummelling white hot industrial tinged noise making. In it’s last few mintues the whole track seems to suddenly be swept away in a hazing oceanic manner, but just before it’s final moments the intensity sides back in again. This track is a great piece of overwhelming & head fucking layer active walled noise.

Next we have the three tracks from Clive Henry- Clive has been active in the UK HNW/ANW scene since around 2010, putting out release that mix walled noise with field recordings, weird sound craft, & unsettling ambience. He often picks thought provoking & arty themes for his releases, and sonically ever thing he does meretricious worked out & executed. So far the project has put around 14 or 15 releases.

First up we have “4:27PM, 10th Of August, 2012”, and this track opens with a tightly textured mass churning ‘n’ juddering noise, which is underfed by locked pummelling/ jittering- to me it feels like your being endless pounded by waves upon waves of thick white & grey static, as if you are standing on a wild ‘n’ windy shore, being rapidly engulfed by first one wave after another. As the track progress ones mind starts to home in on this really tense ‘n’ taut almost groove like pummelling/ electro grinding element- this is edged by a crisp ‘n’ semi sputtering, yet focused drilling. Around the 11th minute the thick-ness suddenly cuts back to just a thinner sonic skin of crinkling ‘n’ crisp static haze, and by the 14th minute we have this rather chilling buried random banging ‘n’ smashing tones appearing. And for some reason these brought to mind strange & unexplained noise heard inside a dusty & cobweb weaved abandoned house; like the thinned skin of static texture is the cobwebs/ dust, and the banging & crashing is something rather unsettling a few rooms away- I know it’s an odd description /feeling but that’s what I get from it.

The second Mr Henry’s track comes in the form of “3AM, 20th Of August, 2011”, and this starts off been built around a very dense & claustrophobic mixture of thick chalky & earthy grinding, which is centre with a endless downward roar & jittering /spiralling sub-tones. It really feels like your been taken on journey deep into rock & earth, and it almost makes you feel airless & oppressed by the weight of ground above you. Like the first track you start to make out more layer detail as the track progresses, and as it progresses Mr Henry effortless drills deeper & deeper into to more pressing, detailed, and hellishly dense wall-ness. And in it’s last few mintues it feels like you’ve come to ground in a massive churning & engulfing mix of landslide & lashing mud downpour, as the weighty ‘n’ wet textures batter at you.

Lastly we have “10:51PM, 10th Of August, 2012” from Mr Henry- and this track starts off a lot more stripped & lo-fi with a slowly building ‘n’ growing mass of jittering ‘n’ crinkling static haze, which is under fed by pressing yet wiry drill sustain. The whole thing feels like rapidly moving fog of static that is slowly but surely covering & engulfing you in it’s growing detail of crisp yet slowly battering winter-ness. Once again Clive very cleverly builds & layer up sonic detail, so as the track progresses you make out more and more textural layers. At around the six minute we get this rather unsettling & wavering mixture of vibe, whistle & pipe work weaving out this slow child like melody, which is just heard under the slow wintery veil of noise haze.

All told this is a very rewarding & cleverly conceived split from this pair of creative & progressive walled noise projects. As this has been out over a year or so now it might be difficult to source a copy of this, but it’s certainly well worth checking out as both parties here are on brilliant sonic form through-out the split.

The release comes in the form of a 3inc CDR that comes in a rather arty black envelope, which features stuck-on text based collage artwork. The CDR takes in a single track entitled “Consonants For A Unrecognised Language”, which comes in at just shy of the nineteen & a half minute mark.

The track opens with overdriven ‘n’ head battering bass textures, which are slowly seared & bayed by sudden loud & teeth rattling noise currents. As the track progress WIT tightens & tenses up the atmosphere to such a point that you feel it’s sudden going to exploded out of your stereo, but it never does. By around the five minute mark the bass billow has reached an fixed yet intense plateau, and you start to get a conists & building mass cluttering ‘n’ tautly spluttering static mixed into the track. By the 8th minute these static elements seem to spread-out & balk-up with their dense caustic webs of sound, and the tension just seems to keep build & building. The rest of the track sees WIT slowly blur ‘n’ sear the bass billow & static elements together until they shift into a almost complete noise white-out, but in it’s last few mintues a more clamouring & structured feel starts to arise just before the track cuts out & ends.
All told this is another highly rewarding release from WIT, which shows the projects ability to make extremely well conceived & engrossing static noise matter, that mangers to build & build tension while remaining creative & enchanting through-out. Sadly this is now out-of-print with the label, but there are talks of a reissue appearing….lets hope this is the case as more people need to hear this great piece of work.

Each cdr is limited to 12 copies and is 4EUR each, plus postage.
If you order all five cdrs together, the total (incl postage) will be 20EUR.
Artist copies will go out with the first wave of orders – if I haven’t got your address already, please email it to me.

Holy crap, there’s another review for INFINITE HUM that’s making me giddy and giggly, this time from the lovely folks over at The Quietus.

The column, SPOOL’S OUT, also features lots of other recent tape reviews in this (only the second) monthly column as well as some interesting thoughts on the act/art of putting out cassettes in an age like this.

Thanks, guys! *blushes*

Flat out noise is a tough review to write. The reasons as to why a particular twenty-minute stretch of luminescent white noise is any better than another are often actually relatively difficult to pinpoint beyond “that Masonna track made me feel dizzy, but in a good way”, or “that Bastard Noise jam was a bit too much for me today”. Rhythm, tonality and melody all go more or less out the window, leaving texture and structure behind. It is what it is, and the very being what it is, is most of what it is – if you get my meaning – and in this case, Where Is This is what it is.

The Tapeworm is a relentless tape label dedicated to putting out music by often-unknown artists aiming to explore the strengths, history and flaws of the format. They’ve already put out four tapes in 2014, including an abstract assemblage of iPhone recordings by Oren Ambarchi and, indeed, this ball aching blowout of a noise tape by Dubliner Mark Ward. Having pressed play, oppressive walls of distorted sound flood my speakers, the limits of the tape format readily audible, and any sense of clarity a distant memory already. There’s no detail given as to how the sounds were made either. This could be guitar feedback, or a distorted keyboard, or bastardised field recordings – and it barely matters. The very outer edges of the noise are perhaps softened somewhat by the cavernous reverb treatment given to the proceedings. This glacial edge is more audible on side two’s comparatively gentle ‘Infinite Hiss’, which chooses to lap the shore of the speakers in ebbing waves. But it’s the opening sidelong ‘Infinite Hum’ and the equally challenging high-end squall of ‘Infinite Howl’ that stick in the mind, giving and taking away in as much as it takes a stoic listener to make it through in one piece, but utterly defies any attempt at tuning out. The restlessly prolific DIY noise artist is almost an underground cliché at this point, but tapes like Infinite Hum are a reminder as to precisely why it’s such an important form of music, and just how the much sonic exploration we’ve still left to do.